Fire
by Sarabibliomania
Summary: I didn't mean to fall for her. Didn't mean for it to happen. Didn't even see it coming before it did. No warning signs or hints of a wave bursting under the surface before it rose up and drowned me. But it happened.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is just a one shot I've been planning for a little while and hope to elaborate on further when the new season starts airing in fall. The woman he refers to is one I created myself and alone is my creation.

I didn't mean to fall for her.

Didn't mean for it to happen. Didn't even see it coming before it did. No warning signs or hints of a wave bursting under the surface before it rose up and drowned me.

But it happened.

We weren't even that close. Just a coworker with whom I shared basic words of courtesy, an almost friend who's life I only knew the bones of. Didn't care to add flesh to them and in them find a human being or someone I could truly care about.

But I did.

I thought she was pretty but that was a fact instead of an opinion. She had an easy smile and her eyes were a softened brown like the underside of bark just warmed and caught by flames. She laughed kindly and when she was angry you could see it coming like the sky shading purple before a violent storm.

But it was fact not opinion.

I was hurt when she had been shot. Saw a brief collision of moments in passing that we had shared and felt them cut at me again when I thought of anything else. I felt relief when she was safe again and awkwardly told her I wished her well and she replied in the same awkwardness.

It hung between us like a word you knew but couldn't quite pronounce.

I felt anger in her name for the first time when she told me about her childhood. When she talked down a victim with a trembling voice and tear filled eyes like rain had quenched and frozen the flames. In that moment I hated her nameless father. Hated him with such purity and blindness that if he had stood before me then I would have killed him without hesitation or regret.

The awkwardness between us faded then. Became ashes and in its place burned something that flickered but never went out: understanding.

I cringed when I heard over the headset the sound of her beaten, her grunts of pain and the crash and collision as she was shoved into either wood or glass. I clutched at the headphones over my ears in contending desperation to either rip them off as far as I could throw them or hold them closer to hear her voice and be assured that she was still alive.

That she was still okay and somehow so was I.

I grew quiet around her when she miscarried seven months into her pregnancy. When she came back to work with a faded light to her eyes like the flames had been doused and all that remained was smoke. I lost the ability to speak to her then. To say words that could either heal her or re-break those wounds. I knew no balance between them and simply watched as Reid poured her a cup of coffee and pressed his lips to her hair in an affection that the BAU only recently allowed.

It wasn't jealousy. Not then. Not yet.

I pulled her into a one armed hug when she came to work with a ring glittered on her finger and a renewed brightness to her eyes. I clapped Reid on the back in congratulations and teased him of his wedding night until his cheeks burned red and she laughingly told me to stop teasing.

It wasn't jealousy. Not then. Not yet.

It was when she was shot in the arm that I felt the shift. Like grains of sand suddenly broke apart inside me and weighed me down with something that I felt but lost track of between my fingers. When she fell and blood soaked into her sleeve and panic and rage became raw and one inside me and it was all red and all her.

It was the waves building under the surface then. The purple in the sky before the violent storm.

It broke when we were assigned a case together apart from the others. When we both sat on the floor next to the victim for hours trying to coax him out and the three of us bonded and locked together with an understood darkness that we all wished we could forget. She sat on the tile with her hair swept and fallen over her shoulder and her nails lazily pulling at the hem of her jeans, her ring glittered and suddenly so significant on her finger.

It was jealousy then. It is jealously now.

I told her that her strength astounded me, so many other words I wasn't allowed to say suddenly broken and sharp in my thoughts. That she was kind. That she was funny. That she was beautiful. That she knew how to knit and sometimes made us scarves or mittens while we discussed cases on the plane. That she took only milk in her coffee and stirred it exactly three times each time. That in a split second and a look with flames burnt gold she made me weaker and more fragile than I had ever dared grow close to.

That if she had touched me then I would have shattered and broken.

I didn't tell her. How could I? She was my co worker. She was my friend. She was the wife of a man I cared for and who loved her in return beyond any reasoning he tried so hard to piece together. I had no place in that picture. In that world that for once in her life held together with no cracks.

I was a missing piece that would break the only image if I tried to force a place.

I avoided her carefully, took miniscule mentions not to sit at her side or teasingly brush her hand as she stirred her coffee three times and Reid for the hundredth time asked her how she could not want sugar.

It seemed impossible that what years ago seemed so insignificant was almost unbearable to now avoid.

She picked up on it though. Asked me out to brunch one morning with the nearly warmed breeze teasingly pulling at her hair and her cup of coffee in her hands that had been stirred three times. She asked if she had offended me and in all sincerity begged me how she could fix it, standing in such perfect stance that the sunlight caught her hair and for a moment blinded me of anything else but her.

I was saved the task of trying to form words when we were interrupted and called in for a case.

My resolve was tested when we took the careful steps to the bank and the windows suddenly blew out with violent burst of glass and stone and I shoved her to the ground beneath me in more urgency and care then befitting our relationship. I breathlessly turned her over beneath me and with the echo of the explosion still muffled in my ears cradled her face between my fingers and begged for her eyes to focus on mine and assure me that there was no real damage and that I saved her.

She couldn't stand and I lifted her into my arms and to my chest, screaming for an ambulance in a panic that rendered me blind.

She returned the favor less than an hour later when the unsub had me pinned to the garbage and the shots of her gun rang out and echoed in the narrowness of the alley. He collapsed with blood soaked in his shirt and she raised her eyes to me breathlessly with the delicate tangle of her hair loose from her ponytail and her finger frozen over the trigger.

There was something in that moment that hurt. The utter determination hardened in her eyes that almost gave way to a hope I couldn't have.

But it was enough. The hope not yet formed had burned its mark and I couldn't stop the words burnt on my tongue and frozen in the air. That I was in love with her. That I had fallen in love with her and I couldn't stop and a small part of me that hurt with hope didn't want to. I was gone and I was fallen and I couldn't go back.

It was the look in her eyes that quenched the hope and instead shoved glass down my throat.

It was only an hour later and we were on the dance floor again that the glass eased and the hope reignited. When my fingers delicately lost themselves in her lower back and she shifted her grasp through mine that tensed under my skin like a line of wire hot like electricity. When I closed my eyes in a moment of weakness and pressed my cheek against her hair to taste the scent of her on my tongue in a hurt I couldn't bear.

When I opened my eyes again a moment later and realised that she had just done the same.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This only intended to be one chapter but I got an idea to continue this tonight and thought I would write it out. From what I've seen and planned from the show this hasn't happened (or might not ever happen) but I thought I would write and explore it anyway. Enjoy. This chapter is why it's raised to rated M.

She and Reid got into a fight.

It was the first words she said when I opened the door, barely waiting for me to appear on the other side of it before the words were past her lips and heavy in the air like rain on a humid night. Her eyes were rimmed red and her hair frayed like she had run her fingers through it too many times so it stood on end.

It took me a moment or two to form words, my breath caught in my throat and my heart caught between beats.

I brought her a beer with the cap already popped off and the sides of it slick with my sweat as I nervously set the bottle on the table and settled next to her on the couch, the space between us awkwardly set.

Too close. But too far.

She was quiet at first, drinking heavily from the bottle and peeling off the label with her fingernail, playing the words over in her head as I watched her and tried to keep my breathing even while feeling it was coming too fast and at the same time too slow.

I told him about you.

I looked at her then; her eyes still on the bottle and the label crumbled over the tips of her fingers with beads of condensation dotted the skin.

What did you say?

The words came out thicker on my tongue, every inch of the air pressed against me and holding me down with the knowledge that she was so close to me. Her knee almost touching my thigh and her hair almost trailed to catch my shoulder.

Too close. But too far.

She sighed and wiped her eyes, fingers pressed against her lips as she stared out at the window to the street behind the couch. The streetlights crystallized in her eyes and pain ripped through me hotly that she was so close to me but that I couldn't touch her.

I told him that you were in love with me.

She looked at me, the lights of a passing car shattering in her eyes and blinded me. The imprint of her still pressed against my eyelids and remolded itself once I could again see through the blur.

What did he say?

She took another sip from the bottle, the liquid of it visibly fluttered down my throat and I ached to trail my fingers down her throat to her collar, ghosting my lips after and tasting her skin but I dug my fingers into the fabric of my jeans and waited for the urge to pass which it never did.

He was confused. More so when I defended you. But that's not why we fought.

I waited but she left the words hanging. It was a coil inside me, tightened with tension until I could feel the coating of it shed and the form of it read to spring and snap.

Why then?

She set the bottle back onto the table, a ring of moisture shattered on the wood before she sat back and leaned in close so that I could count the freckles on her nose and pinpricks of light in her eyes. And she kissed me.

My mind went blank.

Everything I knew or would ever know again was gone and all that existed was her and the taste of her lips against mine. They were soft. Like the underside of a flowers petal or a sheen of grass that had been broken by footsteps. It hurt. Being this close but so far away. Because there would never be close enough.

Not until I was under her skin and she was under mine.

She pulled away from me and the world went haywire, everything out of orbit and focus with my lips still humming with the taste of hers and my heart beat going too fast and too hard for me to catch my breath in between. She was staring at me, somewhat breathless though the kiss hadn't been long.

She was waiting.

Waiting for me to respond. To tell her she had to leave or that she could stay and I could take the couch. That it was wrong. That she had had something to drink. That she was married and would still be in the morning. That it was just a fight and she loved him and loved him still and everything that we did would be a mistake we couldn't take back. That I was in love with her and it hurt to breath because she was always too close but too far.

But I didn't.

This time I was the one to kiss her, not as gentle as she had been but with more tenderness then I usually showed my one night stands that had nearly doubled since my heart started to flip at the sight of her. They wanted sex and they wanted it hard and fast and I gave it to them with a nonchalance that scared me sometimes. Rolled off them with their sweat on my skin and their name long forgotten as I had pretended they were here and lost the fantasy before it fully formed and collapse over my fingers.

But this was different. She was different.

My fingers tangled in her hair and I held it to her cheek like, pressing deeper against her lips and tasting her tongue against mine as she dug her fingers into my arm and her nails biting into the muscle.

I would have marks the next morning.

Her fingers grazed back down my arms and to my stomach, fumbling at the hem and dragging it upwards as I lifted my arms so she could pull it over my head. There was a suffocating moment as the fabric cleared over my eyes and I lost sight of her but then it crumbled on the other side of the couch and her hands were trailing over chest and memorizing each muscle and line.

I closed my eyes as her tongue pressed over her heart beat.

She withdrew her hands and I took her place and moved closer, pressing my lips to her neck and tracing them over the lines there and catching on her strands of hair. She moaned as I bite lightly on her collar bone and I trembled against the feel of it that boiled under my skin and in my blood. I ran my fingers down her side and over her breast to her waist and started to lift her shirt off her skin. She delicately raised her arms as I pulled back to pass my hands over her taut stomach and full breasts as her shirt caught in hair and had it fall in a sweep over her face and landed on the floor next to her.

I pressed my lips over her own hair, tasting her heart beat and the fragile lace of her bra.

I grazed my teeth down her shoulder, catching her bra strap and dragging it down with me as it revealed more of her breast and the world blared red with intensity and I could feel my heart beat pulsing in every inch of it.

Pulsing out her name and tasting it in the air.

My lips returned to hers and she slid onto my lap, pressing against my groin and her fingers knotted behind my head as I dug my fingers into her hips and tracing the bones under her jeans before I braced my hands behind her and stood, almost falling back with the world already uneasy from her touch.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: This is where things get rated M. Like REALLY rated M. And this is my first smut so I'm not going to ask you to be nice but be aware that there is always room to grow. I have at least four more chapters planned which I will get to as soon as my muse strikes. And this is kind of a fanfiction from my fanfiction where they do get together. In the actual one I have planned we left off where he told her he loved her and I'm not sure where it's going to go from there. Enjoy!

She buried her face into my shoulder when I moved and I faltered when her tongue touched my pulse.

It wasn't supposed to feel like this. Not with her. Not like this. It was supposed to be wrong. To feel wrong like knives were under my skin. But all I could feel was her breath and her lips and the sound of my footsteps as I led her down the hallway to my bedroom, my thumbs running over her hip bones as I eased open the door with my foot and carried her over to the bed. I bent my knees somewhat and laid her down onto the quilt so she could loosen her fingers from the back of my neck and lay back on it.

The light from the street faded on her skin and softened its lines so if I touched her she would dissolve.

She crawled up along the sheets, the shadows from the light shattering over her skin before she settled against the pillows, her fingers entwined in the wooden headboard and her hair splayed jaggedly over her face.

I loved her. I was in love with her. She was here and she was mine and I loved her and I was hers.

I knelt on the edge of the bed and crawled along its length until I could trace my fingers along her jeans and to her waist, leaning over and sinking my teeth into her hip bone as she jerked beneath me and I heard her fingernails scratch at the wood as I ran my tongue over where my teeth marked.

She was going to be marked too.

I pressed my lips up her stomach and to the lace edge of her bra, tracing over her breast and running my tongue along her neck before my lips were on hers again and I could taste her moan. I removed my hand from her waist and brought it up and over her arm as I entwined her fingers with mine, our hands twisted against the wood and into the pillows as I kissed her deeper and deeper.

Losing myself again under her skin.

She pulled her fingers from mine as I pulled away and she arched her back to reach behind her and undue her bra. The black lace fell over her arms and she tossed it to the floor, her arms again entangled behind her and her back sensually ached. I trembled as a passing car illuminated over her skin and breasts and I ran my finger over the curve and down her stomach to where her jeans lay partially opened with her backs arch.

She gasped under my touch and I nearly lost it in a heat that burned and consumed me.

I ran my tongue over her stomach and between her breasts and her fingers tightened into the pillow as she panted and I swallowed the sound of it with my lips as I pushed her further into the sheets and felt her breasts pressed to my chest and her fingers now digging into my arms and scratching dark lines over their length.

To remind me. That tonight wasn't a dream and it was real. That she was here and she was mine and I was hers.

Her fingers fumbled at my jeans and I pulled back to help her undo them, my fingers shaking as everything I had ever wanted since the moment my heart flipped at the sight of her compressed against me in how close I was to having it.

Her. Mine. Hers.

She helped me undo the zipper and slid them down over my hips as I leaned back to allow her to drag them down my legs with the jean occasionally catching and making my blood bubble with its momentarily frustration. She dragged them off from around my ankles and I didn't see where they fell as she crawled up against me and kissed me deeply, her fingers digging into my neck as she kissed me hard.

Like she wanted me to shatter and lose herself among the pieces.

I buried my fingers up into her hair as she began to move her still clothed hips against mine and I pulled away to bite into her shoulder and gasp as I tried to maintain some sense of control that I lost whenever I got close to her. She nibbled lightly on my collarbone and I jerked against her making us both gasp as I dug my fingers into her shoulder and groaned into her neck.

She would be the death of me. The piece that couldn't fit and would break all the others to do so and I didn't care.

I held a hand underneath her as I pushed her back down onto the bed and grazed her nipple with my teeth and she dug her fingers into the back of my neck as I nipped at her stomach until I came to the top of her jeans and unbuttoned them deftly and dragged them over and down her hips. She arched them to give way and I tossed them over the side of the bed and kissed along her ankle, biting gently on the bone there and she cried out, fingers twisted into her thigh.

It was me that was doing this to her. Me that was making her lose control.

I traced my fingers along her legs and up to where her underwear still was before slipping my fingers under the fabric and trailing them down after; teasing the goose bumps I could feel on her legs. I tossed them aside as well and stared at her for a moment, for the first time in my life looking at all of her for the first time. The cars still passed in front of the window and light and shadow still cut themselves against one another so her skin was an array of shadow and dark that teased me and my fragile hold on my control.

She was beautiful. And I was hers.

She licked her lips carefully; her fingers caught up in her hair as she watched me take her in as if she was unsure what I was thinking like it could be anything other then what it was.

Derek?

It was the first time she spoke since the living room and it felt like hours ago in another existence where I ceased to exist before and ever would again as all of me that ever was or would be was in this moment purely belonging to her.

You're beautiful.

I breathed the words because any louder would shatter whatever this was and I couldn't allow that. A part of me thought I would die before I allowed that. Would allow any kind of sacrifice or gift if I could prolong this forever and never endure anything else. It didn't scare me as it should because this was all I knew and ever would know.

I had never lived anywhere but this moment.

I sank back into the moment and pulled my boxers down from around my hips, entangling them from around my ankles and throwing them into a distant corner before I leaned forward on my knees and crawled over top of her so that our skin didn't touch but I could if I shifted and risked breaking the moment.

I risked it because I wanted the next one.

I pressed myself down against her and for the first time lay with her utterly skin to skin, my lips pressed to hers, her breasts to my chest, my arms through hers and my hips between her legs.

It was here. And it was now. And it was mine. And it was hers.

She sucked lightly on my lip as she ran her fingers over my side and along my side and over my tattoos and into the fine hairs of my head as if she could memorize each one. I nuzzled against her neck as I pulled away and buried my face into her hair, tasting the strands and the light sheen of sweat on her skin as she panted slightly against my ear.

She was my loss of control. And in that moment I was hers.

Hating myself I barely pulled away and reached over to the bedside dresser and opened the top drawer so a condom wrapper crinkled on my fingers and the sweat from my hands made it slip between them, making me swear under my breath. She sat up somewhat, her legs brushing over mine as she took the wrapper herself and carefully ripped it open, unravelling it from inside and moving closer to slip it over me.

It was the first time she touched me there. And I gasped and panted as her fingers lingered as she finished.

She laid back and lay her arms over her head, the shadows moving over her breasts as she breathed and I took a moment to memorize her like that. Fingers entwined in the headboard and scratches on the finish from where her fingernails dug. Hair tossed over her shoulders and darkened in its strands by sweat. Her stomach tightened by her shallow breaths and her legs enticingly trailed over one another. But it was her eyes that stopped me. Froze the world and my heart beat and stunted my breath and my thoughts.

What they said what she would never say out loud.

I eased her legs open and settled between them, a hand reached between me to align myself and my other next to her head to hold me up right and staring down into her eyes which still darkened with the words she wouldn't say and yet screamed at me over and over.

That I was in love with her. And that she might love me back.

I pushed forward and she gasped, fingernails scratching at the wood as I was inside of her and everything else lost all focus or meaning like we were the two centre points of the universe and the rest of it just useless decoration that was passed on as an afterthought.

We were all that existed. We were all that mattered.

I moved inside her again and she bit her lip hard, the well of blood visible under the skin and I sucked on the spot, my other hand joined up adjacent to the other and brushed my nose against hers in a nuzzle as I kissed her deeper and the pillow collapsed on either side of us as I pushed her into it deeper and deeper.

This was all there was. All there ever would be.

I started to move my hips against hers slowly, drawing out each thrust as carefully as I could because if I hurried it or moved too fast then it would be over and she would be gone and all of existence in us both would burst and stretch thing to accommodate the rest of the universe.

I didn't want to live that kind of insignificance.

Her hands came down to my hips to urge me on and I picked up my pace somewhat, keeping myself careful and holding back but her fingers tracing circles against my skin undoing me piece by piece.

This was existence.

Not the life I lived. That everyone lived. The job. The cases. The victims. The suspects. The fact that at the end of the day it was never enough and there was a new day coming and a new case and another twisted individual taking lives and finding no remorse or satisfaction in the act.

It was this. It was now. It was mine. And I was hers.

My breaths were coming in shallow now, my muscles contracting with my thrusts as my forehead brushed with hers as I panted and tried to hold onto my control that she made me lose so easily. Like it was her existence.

Making me lose control over and over.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and bit her nails into my skin as her pants echoed against my ear and I dropped my head to the pillow next to her with the sweat stinging my eyes and her breaths echoing through my blood until I felt too hot like I might collapse into flames.

Dissolve into ash and dissolve into her so we were lost under each other's skin.

I brought my face back to hers and kissed her again, nipping at her lips and teasing blood to the surface before I pulled back the upper half of my body and tightened my fingers into the sheets by our hips to angle them more sharply.

The fragile light glistened off the sweat on her body, faded and sharp and crumbling my insides.

I was close now. The coil I had felt before tighter and more twisted inside of me as I brought one of her legs tighter around my waist and angled my thrusts deeper as she bit her lip and whimpered, the light capturing over her nipple and darkening it enticingly.

I was close.

I could taste the sweat on my lips, feel it tight in my fists as I lost my grip on the sheet and wiped my fingers shakily and returned to my rhythm, losing it more easily then I had before and noting how more desperate my movements were becoming.

I was close.

I fell forward slightly, my hips jostled against hers as she cried out and I tightened my fingers into the headboard, somehow finding hers and entwining them so they slipped and slid against each others with the sweat I could still taste on my lips and feel burned in my eyes. Her gasps were sharper now, her eyes clouded somewhat as I tried to hold out for another moment, another second where I could be the one doing this to her. Making her gasp and wither underneath me instead of the kid who in that moment I found myself hating even as I made love to his wife.

Derek.

My name broke free of her lips, half caught in a gasp like it was an impulse and not even meant to be said or heard but she did and I did.

And I lost it.

I choked out a scream as my head fell to the pillow and I bite at it with my teeth, panting uncontrollably and convulsing against her as she whimpered and clawed at my sweat stained back and unable to find a grip but her fingers finding their way to dig marks into my skin and keeping me grounded when I felt like everything had shattered and there was nothing like pieces.

Pieces of her and pieces of me with no distinction between the two and nothing to make me care about the fact.

My breathing returned to normal and I raised myself up somewhat, suddenly afraid that I was crushing her and lifting my head to take in her face and read the expression in her eyes.

See what I had seen there before and praying that it was still there in some way or form.

She was gasping still, her eyes unfocused somewhat and enough light coming in through the window to shatter across her chest and dance over her sweat stained breasts with her nipples still dark and sensual. I bowed my head and caught one between my teeth as she whimpered breathlessly as I tugged at it before licking it soothingly. I moved my head to the other one, first biting, then tugging then running my tongue over it and feeling it grow even stiffer under my touch.

I could still taste the sweat on her skin. The sweat from my own skin with no distinction between the two.

I raised my eyes to her again and nuzzled my nose against hers before lightly kissing her lips and the gasp still trembled on them. She traced her fingers over the back of my head and pressed her nose against my ear as I buried my face in her neck and felt the flutter of her heart beat against my neck.

I'm in love with you.

I didn't mean to say it. Not when everything in existence that I now was was her and these words and what they meant to me and to her and everything that had now been scattered back across the universe. But I said it. And I meant it. And I meant it in every heartbeat and every breath and every word and every thought and every memory and part of myself because they were all hers and all of her was me loving her.

She was quiet.

Her fingers fell from the back of my head and I raised my eyes to meet hers, silently pleading in every dust that compressed to make us whole that I would still see that look in her eyes, that it was still there and I had some notion that it wasn't all just a dream that I would wake from and find no trace of it remaining.

But it wasn't.

The look in her eyes, the one that I had felt at the dance at JJ's wedding, the look when our eyes met and I was inside of her and we were all that mattered and existed and I didn't care because she was all I needed. to survive, drink and breathe was gone.

I was in love with her. But she didn't love me back.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Alright I'll admit this wasn't my best work but I've been trying to write this chapter for weeks and it never came to me and tonight parts of it did so I wrote those and took breaks which I think distracted from it being as good as it could have been. It's still not bad just not brilliant and since I plan on taking all my stories down eventually, doing a mass edit and this chapter will be a major focus of that. Nevertheless this is what I planned to happen, it is not terrible and it moves the story along. Enjoy!

She looked beautiful when she slept.

It was a thought I never thought I'd have and here it was crawling underneath my skin like the layers had come alive and lost their taste in one another and had wanted to be free.

She looked beautiful.

I moved closer on my pillow, the awkward shadows over my shoulders clipping at her arm tucked beneath her and the strands of her blonde hair curved over the delicate definition of her forearm and the low slope of her back that softly curved until disappearing into the twisted folds of my sheets.

She was beautiful.

I wanted to touch her. To run my fingers down her back and sweep back through her hair and be assured that if I did then last night wouldn't dissolve between my outstretched fingers, scrambling at the dream it really was and leaving my empty and aching.

So I held back. Because I couldn't risk it.

But I knew it was real. Even without the touch I knew it was real because I could feel it burning underneath my skin like a million fires set aflame and turning my insides into ash because it was something I couldn't bear. The taste of her lips on mine, the feel of her fingers on my back and buried under my skin, the ache and the heat of being inside her ...

The look in her eyes when I told her I loved her and I knew she didn't love me back.

That was the detail I knew wouldn't go away. I was marked by it now. Like her teeth on my neck and her fingers on my back I marked and I was scarred and if all the other moments vanished that was the one that would remain.

That I was in love with her. And she didn't love me back.

The sheets crinkled as she shifted next to me, stretching her legs beneath the fabric and her eyes slowly opening so her eyelashes grazed her pillow and I was close enough to hear the scratch.

She is beautiful.

She stretched underneath the sheets, pulling the pillow closer beneath her and lifting her eyes to mine and that is when I saw it sink in. That she was lying naked in the bed of her co worker and not her husband and that every mark and memory from the night before were not jagged nightmares pieced together but a reality she didn't want and I wouldn't give away.

Morning.

It was a stupid thing to say. One that made me cringe inwardly but I couldn't take it back and the sound of it made her glance around the room as if looking for a detail out of place that would jolt her back to reality. There was none. It was real. I was marked. She was marked.

Morning.

Her voice was roughened somewhat from sleep and she cleared her throat to rid the sound of it, her fingernails picking at the edges of her pillowcase, running along the near invisible machine seam. Her eyes were shifting back and forth again and I could see last night playing behind them in pieces.

How'd you sleep?

Another stupid thing to say. Something else I shouldn't have said, this one closer to what we didn't want to say and teasing it awake and alive. But I couldn't take this one back either. It was out and in the air and she twisted the sheet over her shoulder, burying herself beneath it as if just realising how intimately she had been lying. Breasts pressed to the mattress with their curve hidden by her folded arms, her hair tangled over her back and face to split them in shades of gold and pale skin, her legs jagged under the fold of sheets and set at such an angle to illuminate the softened touch of muscle to their length ...

Good. You?

She didn't ask it to me. Said it to her pillow, her eyes fixed on it as if she didn't look at me and she could somehow pretend I was Reid and it was any other morning and not this one. Not after last night. Not with me.

Good.

She glanced at me before turning away, fingers digging into the collapsed fabric of her pillow and taking a deep breath I could feel through the mattress from where I lay less than a foot from her. Too close. But too far away.

Can I use your shower?

She met my eyes this time, the words she didn't say hanging like cut outs on her tongue to remind me that she may not have said them but they were still there and she meant every syllable.

I want to wash the feel of you off my body.

Uh, yeah ... I turned onto my side and gestured at the door, aware of how low the sheet had fallen around my hips and not caring about the intimacy of me not caring. It's just through the door, first on the left. I should have everything you need but I can rush out and get you something if you need it. I turned to her on the last words as she rose from her nest of sheets and pulled one like an awkwardly folded toga around her, the move showing off the curve of her bare breast and making me ache.

No. Thanks but I think I'm good.

She collected the sheets in her hands to fold them and rose from the bed, the mattress dipping then rising in the move as she made her way around the basic structure of the frame and to the doorway, pressing open the door with her foot and disappearing through it. Her foot steps were quiet yet distinct down the hallway before I could hear the bathroom door creak open and the click of the light switch turned on.

It marked me. Every move she made. Every sound.

I fell back to the sheets and pressed my palms against my eyes until my vision pulsed and blurred when I pulled them away. My skin was on fire. Every part of it was alive and biting at itself like it didn't fit and was trying to rip itself free and fall into the ashes of the fire it didn't mean to create. I could feel her everywhere still, every inch of her on every inch of me like I had shed my old skin and the only kind I now knew was the skin she touched.

I was marked.

I let my hands fall to my sides, the sound of running water at the back of my thoughts, and teasing to my nerves that she was less than ten feet away, wet and naked. The thought burned through me, shattering my bones and my veins and nerves and I could almost feel my insides collapse in on themselves with her the cause of my destruction and me not caring that she was.

I was marked.

I tightened my fingers into the sheets next to my thigh, pulled between two thoughts and too much of me divided between them for me to rely too heavily on one side. I could feel her lips on mine, her fingers trailing over my arms, her breathless pants on her lips, the knowledge that we were the only thing that was important and the only thing that mattered. That the world could end and I wouldn't care because she was there with me. Because I could taste her lips and feel her skin and nothing could take that away from me because for one night she may have loved me.

That I was in love with her and that she might love me back.

I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I couldn't see, the memory of the look in her eyes replacing the one that carelessly chipped aside my insides and broke me piece by piece. I pulled back the sheets and stood, not caring to grab a sheet as I made my way to the doorway and pushed through it, the sound of running water louder in the hall and emitting like the steam from under the bathroom door. I pressed my fingers to the wood, closing my eyes for a moment and remembering a moment from nearly eight years ago when we worked on a case together and she lectured me on the state of my car, eyes laughing and her fingers delicately pressed to her to go cup of coffee with just milk stirred three times.

I was marked. But she was marked too.

And I opened the door.


End file.
